▸▾ Colour key

Concerns

Measure to measure linkages

▸▾ Building context

Please select the context of your building here:

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RESPONSIBLE RETROFIT GUIDANCE WHEEL REPORT

Responsible Retrofit Guidance Wheel Report

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About

The Wheel has been developed by the Sustainable Traditional Buildings Alliance (STBA) following on from their report “The Responsible Retrofit of Traditional Buildings” published in September 2012 and funded by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The Report identified significant challenges in traditional building retrofit because of the uncertainty of existing data and research, the complexity of interactions, and possible conflicting priorities and values. The Wheel has been designed to address such issues by clearly identifying different benefits and concerns, by referencing the most relevant and accurate information, and by providing a systemic and holistic approach to retrofit design, application and use. The Wheel is both an aid to decision making and a way of learning about traditional building retrofit. It is linked to the STBA Knowledge Centre where further information, case studies and retrofit advice is available.

The Wheel and the accompanying Knowledge Centre will be updated on a regular basis as new research and evidence about traditional building retrofit becomes available. The intention and desire of the developers and funders is that the Wheel and Knowledge Centre continue to be developed in response to and through interaction with professional and public participation in traditional building retrofit, and in the learning that accompanies this. In this way the risks accompanying retrofit can be reduced, the positive opportunities increased, and society can benefit from joint endeavour and understanding.

The Wheel has been developed with funding and support from the Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC). The work has been undertaken by Isabel Carmona, Peter Cook, Adrian Leaman, Neil May, Tom Randall and Caroline Rye under the direction of the STBA project steering group formed by Roger Curtis (Historic Scotland), Sam Allwinkle (CIAT and Napier University), Sofie Pelsmaker (UCL EI) and David Pickles (English Heritage).

Getting started

The wheel depicts more than 50 measures that can be used for the retrofitting or refurbishing of traditional buildings. It encourages exploration of the measures’ advantages, concerns about their performance and possible interactions between them.

Each measure has a number of advantages and concerns (categorised into technical, heritage and energy). The concerns are colour coded and their summary is shown in the wheel 'rings' for technical, heritage and energy concerns.

To get started you can:

1. Choose your Building Context in the side-bar - some concerns depend on the building context.

and then continue exploring. Exploration can be methodical (around the wheel in order) or you can look at the links between measures.

When retrofitting traditional buildings a measure has interactions with other measures. These are depicted by coloured arrows whenever you view a measure – the thickness of the line represents the intensity of the interaction.￼The interactions of the measures you've added to￼your list are shown in light-grey as you move through the categories.

5. You can follow the links (coloured arrows) to related measures.

The reason for the link is given by its colour.

Related measures also appear on the side bar.

Going further you can:

6. Look deeper into the concerns – to explore the detail of the potential risk and find out about suggested actions to minimise risk.

7. Look at references to further research, guidance and case studies.

8. Select various measures – by adding them to your list.

9. Look at the summary report.

Print out the report that contains all the detail of the context and measures chosen, their advantages, concerns, and related measures, with details of suggested actions to minimise risk and references to follow up.